“If we had a few ca’tridges to fit ’em, we’d take a shot or two jest for luck,” said Sam, raising the double-barrel to his shoulder and running his eye along the clean brown tubes. “But they ain’t no more use to us than so many chunks of ole iron. We dassent sell ’em, an’ pap’ won’t let us have ’em for fear that we will be took up for thieves.”
“Didn’t you hear pap say that he didn’t hook the guns ’cause he wanted ’em, but jest to break up guidin’ an’ ruin them hotels up to the lake?” Jake inquired. “It’s the only way we’ve got to even up with the folks that are tryin’ to starve us out, ain’t it? I’ll go furder’n that, if I ever get a good chance. I’ll burn every camp I find, like Swan done with our’n.”
“I reckon that if me an’ you had the money these guns cost we could wear good clothes an’ live on good grub all the rest of the year, couldn’t we?” said Sam, as he returned the Lefever hammerless to his case and handed it to his brother. “They must have cost as much as forty or fifty dollars apiece, don’t you reckon?”
This showed that Sam had about as clear an idea of the price of fine guns as his father had of the value of split bamboo fishing-rods and German-silver reels. The Winchester was worth fifty dollars, but the list price of the Lefever hammerless was three hundred.
Having put the guns back into the log again, Jake once more raised me to his shoulder, and started off through the woods. But he and Sam moved with long, noiseless steps, stopping frequently to reconnoiter the ground before them, and if they conversed at all it was in low and guarded tones. At the end of half an hour they struck a “carry”—a dim path leading from the pond to another body of water that lay deeper in the forest—and here they became doubly cautious in their movements.
“Now you toddle on ahead,” said Jake to his brother, “an’ if you see one of them city chaps an’ his guide comin’ along the carry, fetch a little whistle so’t I can hide in the bresh afore they see me.”
But, as it happened, this precaution was unnecessary. The carry was deserted by all save themselves, and at the end of another half hour Jake took me through a little clearing and into a dilapidated log shanty, where we found the squatter and his wife waiting for us.